Our love for some seemingly ordinary things is about more than materialistic desire.
I’ve lost my blue glass beads and I miss them. The beads were a souvenir of a few days in a lakeside Italian town, but that is not why their loss matters. Each of the translucent blue beads had a whitish swirl which made it look like a tiny planet Earth, and one day when I had a two-year-old on my hip, he touched each bead saying softly to himself, “Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth.” That is why I miss them.
Human attachment to things is criticised as materialistic, a shallow, anxious, or competitive need to surround ourselves with stuff in the face of the void. “It’s only a thing. You can’t take it with you,” the wise say. Of course it is only a thing and we do use things to signal wealth and status: one little painting by Chagall displays how much money we have, how artistic we are, without saying one self-noting word. But there is more to it than that.
There is gratitude in my attachment to some things – boots, walking poles – because they have accompanied me through hardships and are therefore accorded the status of companions. They are not fungible; it takes months to let them go when they are worn out. I don’t feel the same way about my printer, oven or car, even though they help me just as much. It’s personal; perhaps others do love their oven.
It’s even more the case for things that connect us to others: a bowl given by my potter friend, a brooch from my great-grandmother. They contain the memory of the person who gave them and represent our relationship. I once bought my mother a teacup with cornflowers painted on it at Portobello markets and carried it all the way back from London. After she died, another family member took the cup and I was heartbroken – and indignant. It contained my love for her and her love for me.
The love of beautiful things is deep and ancient and it is hard to argue with Keats that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever”. Still, I suspect I value the ordinary love for my walking boots and my lost blue beads over the exquisite love for purely exquisite things. No, I can’t take them with me, and yes, the blue beads are only a thing, cheap and hardly beautiful, but neither can I take any of this loved world, that loved child with me. All of it, every single thing, will have to be let go.
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